Family Height Chart

We wanted a height board to track our families growth over the years, and knew we wanted something that would move if we moved as well.

The board is a simple knotty pine shelf picked up from the local home center. I filled the knots with epoxy and ink and pared/scraped the excess off.

It was my first attempt at selective staining, we printed numbers on a piece of paper, and then I traced the numbers onto the pine pressing hard with a rounded pencil so to indent the outline of the letter and create a stopping point for the stain. I then took some stain I had on hand and brushed it on the numbers in the area I wanted to darken using a small artist’s brush.

After all was said and done I wiped an oil-varnish blend, and once it dried spread some poly on it. I used a brown paint pen to mark the lines in between coats because the pen bled into grain of the unsealed wood.

The board had a slight cup, so I utilized that to keep it secure to the wall by routing a keyhole on the upper back at exactly 6’ and the cup of the board combined with the keyhole slot keeps it firm on the wall with one screw in the wall at 6’ high.